6 Wakefield Terrace, Bessbrook, Co.Armagh

No. 6 Wakefield Terrace is a two-storey, three-bay end-of-terrace house finished in painted lined cement render, originally built around 1865 and substantially rebuilt around 1926. It forms the corner unit of a terrace of six similar houses (Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace), positioned where Fountain Street meets Church Road at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square in Bessbrook, County Armagh. Unlike Nos. 1–5, which face north-east onto Fountain Street, No. 6 faces north-west onto Church Road and is set slightly back from the public footpath. The house, its gate, and its railings are all included within the listing.

The building has a rectangular plan with a single-storey, monopitched rear porch attached to the rear centre bay and extending south-west. The roof is covered in natural slate with roll-top terracotta clay ridge tiles, and there are rectangular-section red brick chimneys to both the north-east and south-west gables, both rebuilt in rustic red brick and fitted with three terracotta clay pots each. Eaves are flush with a painted timber fascia.

Rainwater goods are generally metal, with ogee guttering at the front discharging to fluted rectangular-section metal downpipes. At the rear, half-round guttering discharges to original square-section cast iron downpipes fitted with decorative trefoil brackets.

Principal (north-west) elevation The front elevation faces north-west onto Church Road and is set back behind a modest paved front yard enclosed by a dwarf red brick wall topped with painted hooped metal railings. A foot gate hung on circular-section cast iron posts with conical caps opens onto a concrete path leading to the central entrance bay. The elevation is three bays wide across two storeys. The central bay contains the entrance door, flanked on each side by sliding sash windows. The door surround is painted and square-headed, with plain rectangular-section pilasters and a moulded entablature. The door itself is a four-panelled painted timber door with brass and black iron door furniture, a square-headed fanlight, and a stylised black iron bat knocker incorporating a letterbox. A modern bulkhead light fitting is positioned above the door. The first-floor windows align directly above the ground-floor openings. The window above the door is diminutive, flanked by windows set within gabled dormers; all are double-hung 3-over-3 sliding timber sash windows with horns and reduced-height top sashes. Raised render quoins are present at the south-west corner.

South-west elevation The south-west gable faces a tarmacked area and looks towards the Spar shop and No. 1 Lakeview. It presents a two-storey gabled form with a rectangular-section chimney at the apex, painted lined cement render finish, and raised render quoins. There is a vent near ground level and no other visible openings. Railings and gates leading to the houses of Lakeview are attached at the south-east end of this elevation.

South-east (rear) elevation The rear elevation faces into a shared rear yard serving the terrace. The single-storey monopitched rear porch is attached to the centre bay and extends south-west; it has a corrugated metal roof and smooth render finish, with a painted sheeted timber door on the north-east side and a single three-part top-opening casement window on the south-west. The first-floor windows at the rear are similar in arrangement to the front, with a central diminutive window flanked by gabled windows. There is a single window to the south-west of the porch and two windows to the north-east. The elevation is finished in lined cement render with stone cills to the windows.

North-east elevation The north-east elevation is attached to No. 5 Wakefield Terrace.

Setting The six houses of Wakefield Terrace occupy a gently sloping corner site at the south-eastern end of Charlemont Square. Nos. 1–5 face north-east towards Fountain Street and are fronted by the public footpath; Nos. 2–5 share a continuous ridge line. The rear yards are open to neighbouring dwellings and are typically enclosed by random-coursed rubble stone walling to the south-west. A section of original yard walling facing south-east has been rendered, with a tall pier with a concrete capping adjacent to No. 1 Wakefield Terrace. The village fountain, from which Fountain Street takes its name, stands to the north-east of No. 1. It is of square plan, built in granite ashlar with cast iron spouts to each side and a finial to the top, and is surrounded by a rectangular enclosure of dwarf granite walling topped with painted metal railings; a stone trough also remains.

No. 6 also has significant group value with the neighbouring terraces on Charlemont Square and Lakeview.

Historical background The village of Bessbrook grew from a site historically known as "The Green", first developed industrially in 1761 when John Pollock opened a woollen mill and bleach green there. The location was renamed Bessbrook after Pollock's wife Elizabeth (known as Bess) and the nearby Camlough River. The first edition Ordnance Survey map records that few buildings had been erected by the 1830s; the main structures shown were Mount Caulfield House and a number of thread manufactories and bleach mills.

Bessbrook was effectively founded as a planned settlement in 1845 when John Grubb Richardson (1813–1891), a Quaker linen merchant from Lambeg, purchased one of the derelict mills on the site and began building housing for his factory workers. Richardson later explained that he had "a great aversion to be responsible for a factory population in a large town" and sought out a country district with water power and local flax cultivation. He established Bessbrook as a social experiment, providing good living and working conditions in the belief that this would foster positive relations between employer and employee. His philanthropic approach led him to bring the poor and unemployed from the surrounding countryside to live and work at Bessbrook.

Bessbrook became widely known as a village without the "Three Ps": by Richardson's stipulation there was no public house, no pawnshop, and consequently no need for police. In place of a public house, Richardson provided recreational and educational facilities at the Institute, well-stocked shops, and had milk, tea and cocoa distributed to mill workers. The majority of the population voted to maintain these conditions in the 1870s, and no public house exists at Bessbrook to this day. Police were not stationed in the village until the turn of the 20th century.

Richardson's layout of Bessbrook was influenced by the work of William Penn, the American Quaker responsible for planning Philadelphia in the late 17th century. The carefully planned development of Bessbrook, including the uniform terraces at Charlemont Square and College Square, is considered to have influenced the design of the later English model villages at Saltaire (1852), Port Sunlight (1888), and Bourneville (developed by the Cadbury family from 1895).

In 1863 Richardson became the sole owner of the Bessbrook Spinning Company after buying out his brother's shares. The local linen industry boomed during the American Civil War (1861–65) as access to American cotton was severed, and Richardson took advantage of this by greatly expanding his factory and workforce. In 1865 Lord Charlemont sold the remainder of the Camlough Estate to Richardson, making him the principal employer and landowner at Bessbrook. Charlemont Square was laid out between 1862 and 1866 to accommodate the influx of workers, and the earlier terrace on the site of Nos. 1–6 Wakefield Terrace — then known as Fountain Place — was also constructed during this period. Between 1861 and 1871 the population of Bessbrook rose from 637 to 2,215, and the number of houses increased from 73 to 296.

Every house in Bessbrook was owned by the Bessbrook Spinning Company and contained between three and five rooms. Tenants were required to sign an agreement containing specific stipulations, including rules about the keeping of pigs and fowl (which had to be housed in a separate pig-sty or fowl-run in the garden and not within the family's living quarters or yard), and an obligation to send their children to school until they were old enough to work in the mill.

No. 6 Wakefield Terrace was originally built around 1865 as a single-storey building. Fountain Place is not recorded in Griffith's Valuation of 1862 but appears for the first time in the Annual Revisions of 1866. The building that preceded No. 6 was originally valued at £4 10 shillings and was occupied by a Ms. Mary O'Hare. Early 20th-century photographs of the terrace show that Nos. 1 and 6 were originally single-storey cottages while the buildings between them formed a two-storey terrace. The 1911 Census of Ireland recorded the site as being occupied by Elizabeth Chambers, a linen winder at Richardson's factory, and described the house as a second-class dwelling of five rooms. The 1906 Ordnance Survey Town Plan depicted the building as a rectangular structure with no outbuildings and not yet attached to the adjoining terrace.

By 1926 the Annual Revisions valuer noted that the houses along Fountain Place were in the process of being rebuilt. Whether this involved complete reconstruction or substantial refurbishment is not certain, but it is clear that Nos. 1 and 6 were raised by a storey as part of the works. The row was renamed Wakefield Terrace at this time. Following rebuilding, No. 6 was revalued at £8 10 shillings and was initially leased by the Bessbrook Spinning Company to a Mr. Robert Livingston, whose family remained at the address until at least the 1970s. Under the First General Revaluation of Property in Northern Ireland (1936–57), the rateable value was raised to £14.

During the Second World War the mill workers at Bessbrook were engaged in supplying cloth for military uniforms. The Bessbrook Spinning Company retained ownership of its housing stock until the 1960s, when a post-war downturn in the local textile market necessitated the sale of many dwellings in the village. The mill itself closed in 1972 and was subsequently occupied by the British Army. The Livingston family purchased No. 6 outright around 1969, and by the end of the Second General Revaluation (1956–72) the total rateable value of the house stood at £18.

No. 6 Wakefield Terrace was listed in 1981 and was included in the Bessbrook Conservation Area, designated in 1983 in recognition of Bessbrook's historical significance as a planned mill village and its distinct form and character.